Once in a while a band comes along that blows you away. In a saturated music industry it takes the right kind of band to make an impact. These days, mainstream rock bands tend to follow in the footsteps of those who paved the road before them. Originality is hard to come by. It’s hard to draw on your influences and not end up sounding like a carbon copy of them. Fortunately, Janus have a lot of influences to seek inspiration from. They’re not unlike anything you’ve heard before, but they pull it off with a convincing style and aplomb.

The ten tracks on offer here are the showcase of Janus’s technical brilliance. The songs are heavy on electronics and paint an evocative landscape in the mind of the listener. They then proceed to tear that painting to shreds with the genre staple screaming, riffs, hooks, melodies, and breakdowns. It may all sound overdone and repetitious, but it’s not. Although the ingredients for a mainstream rock act are present the band mixes them in an unconventional fashion.

Lead single “Eyesore” is a monstrous track. It starts off with a piece of ambient musicality before riding a tornado-like riff into a memorable and catchy chorus. This is probably the band’s greatest strength. The song’s on offer here are infectious and will be stuck in your head for days. “Six Letters Sent” is a fantastic opener for the album and has another gripping chorus. However, this is by no means an album that has a deep rooted pop mentality. Borderline cryptic lyrics make singer David Scotney sound almost like a cross between Chino from Deftones and Jesse Hasek from 10 Years. It helps that his screams and harmonies are equally evocative. Despite this, the rest of the band is a technical tour de force. There’s just so much going on in the background that it’s hard to imagine how they strung it all together. The guitars are fixating; the drums roll out complex patterns; and the bass chugs along keeping the low end rumbling. Oh, and they also produced the whole album themselves with no major label backing. Not too shabby at all.

The rest of the album continues to be stellar. There is zero filler. The lyrics cover despair, alienation, anger, and assorted social commentary. The good thing is that it all works very well within the context of the band. Even the slower mid tempo songs (“Your Arms”; “Maybe It’s You”) have a furious energy surrounding them and captivate the listener. However, the standout track would have to be “The Nerve”. It’s a song with so many different levels. It’s almost progressive in tone with a hint of Radiohead. BY the time you reach the end of the track it’s transformed into something entirely different. All I’ll say is that don’t be surprised if you find yourself head banging to the riffs and screams at the end.

Janus is a relatively new band, but the production of the album and their arrangements make this four-piece exciting. They play like they’ve been doing this for a while. This is a good thing because it provides the band with the ability to shine in an otherwise tiring genre and be noticed. However, once you’re in their sights they’re focused and able to manipulate their influences in intriguing ways to keep you hooked. Simply put, Red Right Return rocks.

Score: 8.5/10

Genre: Alt-Metal

Album Number: 2

Website: www.janusmusic.com

Release Date: Out Now

You Might Also Like: Deftones, 10 Years, Chevelle, Red, Linkin Park

Urban Chronicler